Suddenly we find that something that we have taken for grant on a world scale could be at risk of becoming rare and therefore expensive.

Many fruits and vegetables rely on the bee for pollination without which the plants do not produce anything and therefore will die out leaving the world with a severe shortage of stable foods that we have all come to take for granted every time that we visit the supermarket.

The problem is that there is no definitive reason for the decline and therefore at the moment no way of preventing the loss of the bee.

Source [National Geographic]

Idea behind this plan is not to make money from desperate travellers, but it is thought that buy introducing the charge less travellers will use the loos and therefore Ryan Air will able to remove some of them from the planes and install more seats.

It is estimated that on a Boeing 737-800 plane, two of the three loos could be removed and six seats put into the craft, which means more money for the airline.

Passengers will be encouraged to “Go” before getting their flights; otherwise, they could be faced with a charge of anything between £1 to £1.60 for the privilege.

Source [MSN]

Steve Ballmer has said that if the plan to restrict the tax breaks for offshore companies get through congress, Microsoft and its employees would be better off moving to a location outside of the US.

Currently the US tax rules allow companies to defer tax at a rate of thirty five per cent on most foreign profits, but the proposed changes would mean that this scheme would come to an end. The idea being that companies would be encouraged to invest in the US.

Source [Bloomberg]

They have found that all chairs have been removed from the plants and a sophisticated alarm system has been installed that goes off should an employee not be walking fast enough!

The idea behind the removal of chairs saves money obviously, but also increases productivity and helps to form better employee relations.

As for the alarm system, should an employee been clocked walking at a speed less than five metres every 3.6 seconds the alarm sounds and lights begin to flash. The reason given, that they are wasting air.

The new company motto reads: “Let’s rush: If we don’t, the company and world will perish.”

Source [Gizmodo]

The rules are simple, States can do virtually anything to get a larger company to move in, providing that they have no initial ties to that particular region, but they do have property and employees in place.

Therefore, Apple could be looking at around $46 million in tax breaks to start with over ten years, but they do need to spend in order to save. The Apple server farm could cost somewhere in the region of $1 billion, but they would have spent that in any case.

Source [Apple Insider]

For businesses, it has been an exercise in cost cutting and trimming down. However, as a business attempts to save cash and create a model for the future employees also take stock, this can have some serious effects on the company’s long term future.

Enter Google; they are working on an algorithm that can determine which employees are most likely to consider leaving their job. This works on the principle of searching employee data such as reviews, promotions and pay.

Google claim that they are able to identify who in their workforce of over twenty thousand is likely to be thinking of leaving.

Source [WSJ]

Under normal circumstances, it is gold jewellery that people sell to make some extra cash when times get hard. However, the financial crisis has been going for a long time and so another source of gold is turning up precious metal dealers.

The trade in “Dental Scrap” is growing and like it or not dealers are buying, on average, a gold tooth would be worth around £30, but that depends on weight. There is also bridgework and other bits of gold that end up in the mouths of people and this gold is worth money, a frightening prospect.

Source [LA Times]

In fact, the current estimates are that YouTube will be losing something in the region of £265 million during this year alone.

Google bought YouTube in the later part of 2006 for an estimated £1 billion; this followed the huge rise in popularity of user generated content.

Schmidt is in fact under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the time when he was on the board of both Apple and Google.

Source [Tech Radar]

It is a classic mistake to make for example on brick with the letter U, the corresponding word was “Umberlla” while for Y there was a nice image of a boat with the word “Yatch” clearly it is an easy mistake to make at the factory in China as English is not their first language.

But surely the buyers or quality control at Morrison’s would have picked this up, unless of course they thought that was how those words were spelled in the first place, sounds like a case of “Could do better”.

Source [Daily Mail]

Studies show that someone who acquires illegal content are more likely to go out and buy similar products too, this would seem that pirates are also good consumers, but looking at it from a different perspective, it could mean that other people who do not use file sharing are not consumers of that market either.

The figures can be read from whatever angle you please the long and short of it is that it is illegal and the copyright holders are going to be getting tough.

Source [Torrent Freak]